Trauma Writing In The Underground Railroad From The Perspective Of Spatial Narrative

Colson Whitehead(1969—)is one of the most prominent contemporary literary artists in the United States.Since 1999,Whitehead has published ten works,including eight novels and two non-fiction novels.In 2017,with The Underground Railroad,Whitehead became the only novelist of the twenty-first century to have won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for the same work.Since then,The Underground Railroad has given rise to research booms both at home and abroad.Scholarly research on The Underground Railroad has mostly focused on thematic studies,narrative studies,comparative studies,and other aspects.Based on Gabriel Zoran’s spatial narrative theory,this thesis explores the theme of trauma in The Underground Railroad from three levels: the topographical structure,the textual structure,and the chronotropic structure,aiming to explain the traumatic experiences of blacks and their trauma healing in the novel.Besides the introduction and conclusion,this thesis consists of three chapters.The first section of the introduction briefly introduces Whitehead and his work The Underground Railroad.The second section reviews the research abroad and at home on The Underground Railroad,and then presents the research value of this thesis.The third section introduces trauma theory,spatial narrative theory,and the connection between them,and points out the feasibility of using Zoran’s spatial narrative theory to analyze the traumatic theme in The Underground Railroad.Chapter One analyzes individual trauma experienced by Cora based on the topographical structure.Firstly,the oppression of outside and inside spaces highlights the abuse Cora suffered from the black slaves on the southern plantation and her difficult living space in North Carolina.Secondly,the brutal slavery deprives Cora of her mother and lovers,so she can only satisfy her longing for intimacy in the fantasy space.The difference between the real and the fantasy space further deepens Cora’s family trauma and love trauma.Chapter Two analyzes the collective trauma of the black race based on the textual structure.First,the detailed portrayal of marginal individual trauma and the simple description of brutal images and the ultimate fate of the black race show that if individual trauma can be narrated in detail,collective trauma is too heavy to be expressed simply in words.Secondly,Whitehead breaks the linear narrative of the novel and adopts a nonlinear textual structure and nonlinear narrative to explain the tragic fate of the black race from a multi-dimensional textual space.Finally,based on the perspectival structure,the historical background of medicine and politics in the novel insinuates the collective traumatic events of the black race in real life.At the same time,the elements of The Underground Railroad and other works such as location serve as foreground and background,extending the collective trauma in the novel to different texts and times.Chapter Three analyzes the trauma healing process based on the chronotropic structure.In diachronic relations,from Randall plantation to South Carolina,Cora establishes a safe environment by restoring autonomy and security.From South Carolina to the Valentine’s farm,Cora reconnects with the world through good relationships,trauma narratives,and the black community.In synchronic relations,Ajarry and the fugitive slaves,racists,and abolitionists are in static or dynamic states,which influences blacks’ trauma healing.The conclusion summarizes the above three chapters.The plot of the trauma story in The Underground Railroad is presented with obvious spatiality.Therefore,this thesis analyzes the trauma theme in the novel based on spatial narrative theory,which is more conducive to revealing the traumatic experiences of the blacks in the text and their healing process: The topographical structure externalizes individual trauma,reflecting the author’s concern for the inner heart of the marginal characters by literary means;the textual structure expands individual trauma to collective trauma through the multi-level spatial dimension,highlighting the complexity of the trauma theme;the chronotropic structure emphasizes the importance of reflection and action in trauma therapy through dynamic and static contrasts and different plot movement.